You may already have noticed that Oracle 11gR2 for Linux is available for download on Oracle.com website, with documentation.
And this document ends speculation about whether Oracle 11.2 will support column-oriented storage – yes it will:
However, this is apparently available on Exadata storage only as a new error message below indicates:
ORA-64307: hybrid columnar compression is only supported in tablespaces residing on Exadata storage
Cause: An attempt was made to use hybrid columnar compression on unsupported storage.
Action: Create this table in a tablespace residing on Exadata storage or use a different compression type.
Update: Kevin Closson mentioned that 11gR2 doesn’t really have column oriented storage as some other products like Vertica’s and Sybase IQ use, but its rather just column oriented compression option where storage is still organized by row but individual fields in these rows use compression dictionaries whichcan span multiple block boundaries (we’ll thats my interpretation at least).
The 11gR2 release overview doc seems to be wrong in this case, as it says:
Hybrid columnar compression is a new method for organizing how data is stored. Instead of storing the data in traditional rows, the data is grouped, ordered and stored one column at a time.
Read Kevin’s note here:
